It must be emphasized that no official or definitive list of the Temple’s grand masters exists. Nothing of the sort has been preserved or handed down to posterity. The Temple’s own records were destroyed or disappeared, and the earliest known compilation of the order’s grand masters dates from 1342—30 years after the order itself was suppressed and 225 years after its foundation. As a result historians compiling lists of grand masters have based their findings on contemporary chroniclers—on a man writing in 1170, for example, who makes a passing allusion to one or another individual as "master" or "grand master" of the Temple. And additional evidence can be obtained by examining documents and charters of the period, in which one or another Templar official would append one or another title to his signature. It is thus hardly surprising that the sequence and dating of grand masters should engender considerable uncertainty and confusion. Nor is it surprising that sequence and dating should vary, sometimes dramatically, from writer to writer, account to account.
Nevertheless, there were certain crucial details—like those summarized above—in which the "Pricuré documents" deviated significantly from all other sources. We could not, therefore, ignore such deviations. We had to determine, as far as we could, whether the list in the Dossiers secrets was based on sloppiness, ignorance, or both; or, alternatively, whether this list was indeed the definitive one, based on "inside" information inaccessible to historians. If Sion did create the Knights Templar, and if Sion (or at least its records) did survive to the present day, we could reasonably expect it to be privy to details unobtainable elsewhere.
Most of the discrepancies between the list in the Dossiers secrets and those in other sources can be explained fairly easily. At this point it is not worth exploring each such discrepancy and accounting for it. But a single example should serve to illustrate how and why such discrepancies might occur. In addition to the grand master the Temple had a multitude of local masters—a master for England, for Normandy, for Aquitaine, for all the territories comprising its domains. There was also an overall European master and, it would appear, a maritime master as well. In documents and charters these local or regional masters would invariably sign themselves "Magister Templi"—"Master of the Temple." And on most occasions the grand master—through modesty, carelessness, indifference, or slap-dash insouciance—would also sign himself as nothing more than "Magister Templi." In other words André de Montbard, regional master of Jerusalem, would, on a charter, have the same designation after his name as the grand master, Bertrand de Blanchefort.
It is thus not difficult to see how a historian, working with one or two charters alone and not cross-checking his references, might readily misconstrue André’s true status in the order. By virtue of precisely this kind of error many lists of Templar grand masters include a man named Everard des Barres. But the grand master, by the Temple’s own constitutions, had to be elected by a general chapter in Jerusalem and had to reside there. Our research revealed that Everard des Barres was a regional master, elected and resident in France, who did not set foot in the Holy Land until much later. On this basis he could be excised from the list of grand masters—as indeed he was in the Dossiers secrets. It was specifically on such academic fine points that the "Prieuré documents" displayed a meticulous accuracy and precision we could not imagine being contrived after the fact.
We spent more than a year considering and comparing various lists of Templar grand masters. We consulted all writers on the order, in English, French, and German, and then checked their sources as well. We examined the chronicles of the time—like those of Guillaume de Tyre—and other contemporary accounts. We con-suited all the charters we could find and obtained comprehensive information on all those known to be still extant. We compared signatories and titles on numerous proclamations, edicts, deeds, and other Templar documents. As a result of this exhaustive inquiry it became apparent that the list in the Dossiers secrets was more accurate than any other—not only on the identity of the grand masters, but on the dates of their respective regimes as well. If a definitive list of the Temple’s grand masters did exist, it was in the Dossiers secrets. 20
The accuracy of this list was not only important in itself. The implications attending it were much broader. Granted, such a list might perhaps have been compiled by an extremely careful researcher, but the task would have been monumental. It seemed much more likely to us that a list of such accuracy attested to some repository of privileged or "inside" information—information hitherto inaccessible to historians.
Whether our conclusion was warranted or not, we were confronted by one indisputable fact—someone had obtained access, somehow, to a list that was more accurate than any other. And since that list—despite its divergence from others more accepted—proved so frequently to be correct, it lent considerable credibility to the "Prieuré documents" as a whole. If the Dossiers secrets were demonstrably reliable in this criticial respect, there was somewhat less reason to doubt them in others.
Such reassurance was both timely and necessary. Without it we might well have dismissed the third list in the Dossiers secrets—the grand masters of the Prieuré de Sion—out of hand. For this third list, even at a cursory glance, seemed absurd.
6
The Grand Masters and the Underground Stream
In the Dossiers secrets the following individuals are listed as successive grand masters of the Prieuré de Sion—or, to use the official term, Nautonnier, an old French word that means "navigator" or "helmsman":
When we first saw this list, it immediately provoked our skepticism. On the one hand it includes a number of names which one would automatically expect to find on such a list—names of famous individuals associated with the "occult" and "esoteric." On the other hand it includes a number of illustrious and improbable names— individuals whom, in certain cases, we could not imagine presiding over a secret society. At the same time many of these latter names are precisely the kind that twentieth-century organizations have often attempted to appropriate for themselves, thus establishing a species of spurious "pedigree." There are, for example, lists published by AMORC, the modern "Rosicrucians" based in California, which include virtually every important figure in Western history and culture whose values, even if only tangentially, happened to coincide with the order’s own. An often haphazard overlap or convergence of attitudes is misconstrued as something tantamount to "initiated membership." And thus one is told that Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and innumerable others were "Rosicrucians"—implying that they were card-carrying members who paid their dues regularly.
Our initial attitude toward the above list was equally cynical. Again, there are the predictable names—names associated with the "occult" and "esoteric." Nicolas Flamel, for instance, is perhaps the most famous and well-documented of medieval alchemists. Robert Fludd, seventeenth-century philosopher, was an exponent of Hermetic thought and other arcane subjects. Johann Valentin Andrea, German contemporary of Fludd, composed, among other things, some of the works that spawned the myth of the fabulous Christian Rosenkreuz. And there are also names like Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Filipepi, who is better known as Botticelli. There are names of distinguished scientists, like Robert Boyle and Sir Issac Newton. During the last two centuries the Prieuré de Sion’s grand masters are alleged to have included such important literary and cultural figures as Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy, and Jean Cocteau.
By including such names the list in the Dossiers secrets could not but appear suspect. It was almost inconceivable that some of the individuals cited had presided over a secret society—still more, a secret society devoted to "occult" and "esoteric" interests. Boyle and Newton, for example, are hardly names that people in the twentieth century associate with the "occult" and "esoteric." And though Hugo, Debussy, and Cocteau were immersed in such matters, they would seem to be too well known, too well researched and documented, to have exercised a "grand mastership" over a secret order. Not, at any rate, without some word of it somehow leaking out.
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br /> On the other hand, the distinguished names are not the only names on the list. Most of the other names belong to high-ranking European nobles, many of whom are extremely obscure—unfamiliar not only to the general reader, but even to the professional historian. There is Guillaume de Gisors, for instance, who in 1306 is said to have organized the Prieuré de Sion into an "Hermetic Freemasonry." And there is Guillaume’s grandfather, Jean de Gisors, who is said to have been Sion’s first independent grand master, assuming his position after the "cutting of the elm" and the separation from the Temple in 1188. There is no question that Jean de Gisors existed historically. He was born in 1133 and died in 1220. He is mentioned in charters and was at least nominal lord of the famous fortress in Normandy where meetings traditionally convened between English and French kings took place, as did the cutting of the elm in 1188. Jean seems to have been an extremely powerful and wealthy land-owner and, until 1193, a vassal of the king of England. He is also known to have possessed property in England, in Sussex, and the manor of Titchfield in Hampshire. According to the Dossiers secrets, he met Thomas à Becket at Gisors in 1169—though there is no indication of the purpose of this meeting. We were able to confirm that Becket was indeed at Gisors in 1169, 3 and it is therefore probable that he had some contact with the lord of the fortress; but we could find no record of any actual encounter between the two men.
In short, Jean de Gisors, apart from a few bland details, proved virtually untraceable. He seemed to have left no mark whatever on history, save his existence and his title. We could find no indication of what he did—what might have constituted his claim to fame or have warranted his assumption of Sion’s grand mastership. If the list of Sion’s purported grand masters was authentic, what, we wondered, did Jean do to earn his place on it? And if the list were a latter-day fabrication, why should someone so obscure be included at all?
There seemed to us only one possible explanation, which did not really explain very much in fact. Like the other aristocratic names on the list of Sion’s grand masters, Jean de Gisors appeared in the complicated genealogies that figured elsewhere in the "Prieuré documents." Together with those other elusive nobles he apparently belonged to the same dense forest of family trees—ultimately descended, supposedly, from the Merovingian dynasty. It thus seemed evident to us that the Prieuré de Sion—to a significant extent at least—was a domestic affair. In some way the order appeared to be intimately associated with a bloodline and a lineage. And it was their connection with this bloodline or lineage that perhaps accounted for the various titled names on the list of grand masters.
From the list quoted above it would seem that Sion’s grand mastership has recurrently shifted between two essentially distinct groups of individuals. On the one hand, there are the figures of monumental stature who—through esoterica, the arts, or the sciences— have produced some impact on Western tradition, history, and culture. On the other hand, there are members of a specific and interlinked network of families—noble and sometimes royal. In some degree this curious juxtaposition imparted plausibility to the list. If one merely wished to "concoct a pedigree," there would be no point in including so many unknown or long-forgotten aristocrats. There would be no point, for instance, in including a man like Charles de Lorraine—Austrian field marshal in the eighteenth century, brother-in-law to the Empress Maria Theresa, who proved himself signally inept on the battlefield and was trounced in one engagement after another by Frederick the Great of Prussia.
In this respect, at least, the Prieuré de Sion would seem to be both modest and realistic. It does not claim to have functioned under the auspices of unqualified geniuses, superhuman "masters," illumined "initiates," saints, sages, or immortals. On the contrary, it acknowledges its grand masters to have been fallible human beings, a representative cross section of humanity—a few geniuses, a few notables, a few "average specimens," a few nonentities, even a few fools.
Why, we could not but wonder, would a forged or fabricated list include such a spectrum? If one wishes to contrive a list of grand masters, why not make all the names on it illustrious? If one wishes to concoct a pedigree that includes Leonardo, Newton, and Victor Hugo, why not also include Dante, Michelangelo, Goethe, and Tolstoi—instead of obscure people like Edouard de Bar and Maximilian de Lorraine? Why, moreover, were there so many "lesser lights" on the list? Why a relatively minor writer like Charles Nodier, rather than contemporaries like Byron or Pushkin? Why an apparent "eccentric" like Cocteau rather than men of such international prestige as André Gide or Albert Camus? And why the omission of individuals like Poussin, whose connection with the mystery had already been established? Such questions nagged at us and argued that the list warranted some consideration before we dismissed it as an arrant fraud.
We therefore embarked on a lengthy and detailed study of the alleged grand masters—their biographies, activities, and accomplishments. In conducting this study we tried, as far as we could, to subject each name on the list to certain critical questions:
1. Was there any personal contact, direct or indirect, between each alleged grand master, his immediate predecessor, and his immediate successor?
2. Was there any affiliation, by blood or otherwise, between each alleged grand master and the families who figured in the genealogies of the "Prieuré documents"—with any of the families of purported Merovingian descent, and especially the ducal house of Lorraine?
3. Was each alleged grand master in any way connected with Rennes-le-Château, Gisors, Stenay, Saint Sulpice, or any of the other sites that had recurred in the course of our previous investigation?
4. If Sion defined itself as a "Hermetic Freemasonry," did each alleged grand master display a predisposition toward Hermetic thought or an involvement with secret societies?
Although information on the alleged grand masters before 1400 was difficult, sometimes impossible to obtain, our investigation of the later figures produced some astonishing results and consistency. Many of them were associated, in one way or another, with one or more of the sites that seemed to be relevant—Rennes-le-Château, Gisors, Stenay, or Saint Sulpice. Most of the names on the list were either allied by blood to the house of Lorraine or associated with it in some other fashion; even Robert Fludd, for example, served as tutor to the sons of Henry of Lorraine. From Nicolas Flamel on, every name on the list, without exception, was steeped in Hermetic thought and often also associated with secret societies—even men whom one would not readily associate with such things, like Boyle and Newton. And with only one exception each alleged grand master had some contact—sometimes direct, sometimes through close mutual friends—with those who preceded and succeeded him. As far as we could determine there was only one apparent "break in the chain." And even this—which seems to have occurred around the French Revolution, between Maximilian de Lorraine and Charles Nodier—is not by any means conclusive.
In the context of this chapter it is not feasible to discuss each alleged grand master in detail. Some of the more obscure figures assume significance only against the background of a given age, and to explain this significance fully would entail lengthy digressions into forgotten byways of history. In the case of the more famous names it would be impossible to do them justice in a few pages. In consequence the relevant biographical material on the alleged grand masters and the connections between them have been consigned to an appendix (see pp. 415-437). The present chapter will dwell on broader social and cultural developments in which a succession of alleged grand masters played a collective part. It was in such social and cultural developments that our research seemed to yield a discernible trace of the Prieuré de Sion’s hand.
RENÉ D’ANJOU
Although he is little known today, René d’Anjou—"Good King René" as he was known—was one of the most important figures in European culture during the years immediately preceding the Renaissance. Born in 1408, during his life he came to hold an awesome array of titles. Among the most important were count of Bar, count of Provence,
count of Piedmont, count of Guise, duke of Calabria, duke of Anjou, duke of Lorraine, king of Hungary, king of Naples and Sicily, king of Aragón, Valencia, Majorca, and Sardinia—and, perhaps most resonant of all, king of Jerusalem. This last was, of course, purely titular. Nevertheless it invoked a continuity extending back to Godfroi de Bouillon and was acknowledged by other European potentates. One of René’s daughters, Marguerite d’Anjou, in 1445, married Henry VI of England and played a prominent role in the Wars of the Roses.
In its earlier phases René d’Anjou’s career seems to have been in some obscure way associated with that of Jeanne d’Arc. As far as is known, Jeanne was born in the town of Domrémy in the duchy of Bar, making her René’s subject. She first impressed herself on history in 1429 when she appeared at the fortress of Vaucouleurs, a few miles up the Meuse from Domrémy. Presenting herself to the commandant of the fortress, she announced her "divine mission" —to save France from the English invaders and ensure that the dauphin, subsequently Charles VII, was crowned king. In order to perform this mission, she would have to join the dauphin at his court at Chinon, on the Loire, far to the southwest. But she did not request a passage to Chinon of the commandant at Vaucouleurs; she requested a special audience with the duke of Lorraine—René’s father-in-law and great-uncle.
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